THE RHINE STRUGGLES TO SURVIVE

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

Published: February 15, 1987

BONN—
For tourists, the Rhine will always be a broad brown ribbon running through the soul of Europe. In the mountain reaches, like the region between Mainz and Coblenz, it winds through wooded hills, its banks lined with sloping vineyards and green gorges capped by turreted castles.

But there is another Rhine - long flat stretches, like the run that passes Leverkusen and the immense chemical works of Bayer, where nature gives way to industry. And there is growing concern that some of the industries that depend so heavily on the Rhine may be wearing out the river. Bargemen, businessmen, politicians and environmentalists are among those who have a stake in the Rhine's struggle to survive. But each group also has its own agenda, and it is getting increasingly difficult to reconcile the conflicting demands.

The Rhine is a throbbing artery of European commerce. From Switzerland in the south to the Netherlands, more than 500 miles north, chemical plants, factories and power stations dot its shores, drinking in millions of gallons a day.

It is also a critical transportation link. About 125 million tons of goods move along the river each year, although that is about a third less than the volume 20 years ago.

And the Rhine still supports a fishing industry, although a shrunken one. Before World War II, Rhine salmon were a delicacy. But because of pollution, restaurants now rarely serve Rhine fish. Today, only a handful of parttime fishermen cast their nets, catching mainly the hardy eel.

For millions of people in the Netherlands and West Germany, the Rhine is a prime source of drinking water, though it must be filtered and mixed with water from wells or reservoirs.

German economists have devised a yardstick to measure the productivity of the Rhine against that of other great rivers, taking into account the amount of goods produced and shipped on or near its shores. By that measure, the drainage basin of the Rhine produces $5 of annual gross national product per cubic meter of its water, more than double the Danube, and five times the Mississippi.

But these are troubled times for the mighty Rhine. Several recent environmental catastrophes have focused attention on the Rhine's fragility:

On Nov. 1, about 30 tons of mercury and pesticides washed into the Rhine when firemen fought a blaze at a Sandoz chemical company warehouse in Basel, Switzerland.

Several days later, Ciba-Geigy, another Swiss chemical giant, admitted it accidently released 900 pounds of pesticide into the Rhine only hours before the Sandoz fire.

In January two barges collided near Dusseldorf, dumping 540 tons of nitrogen fertilizers into the river. Shortly thereafter, a Dutch barge, the Minstreel, rammed a tanker near Krefeld, Germany, pouring 10 tons of a highly explosive benzene compound into the water.

More subtle forces have been challenging the river, as well.

There has been a dramatic transformation in the industrial use of the Rhine. Chemical and pharmaceutical companies, which use the river mainly as a source of water for processing, have burgeoned while mining and manufacturing companies, which use the river primarily for transportation, have shrunk. Three of Germany's biggest steelmakers have blast furnaces on the Rhine: Thyssen, Mannesmann and Krupp. But demand for their products - as well as coal and sand and gravel for construction - has declined in the face of slow growth and foreign competition, cutting revenues and employment in the shipping industry. SOME companies have managed to adapt to the changes. Franz Haniel is a shipping company that has been doing business since the 18th century in the German town of Duisburg, which sits at the point where the Rhine swallows the smaller Ruhr river. Haniel's neat gray buildings, grouped around a cobbled courtyard, reflect its prosperity. As bulk cargoes like ores declined, Haniel bought equipment needed to handle cargo containers and roll-on, roll-off ships, which carry the trailers of tractor-trailer trucks.

Haniel has managed to adapt to the new facts of life on the Rhine, but the combination of shrinking tonnage and automation has put a lot of people out of work. The decline is reflected in cities like Duisburg, which, with its maze of docks and arching cranes, is Europe's largest inland port. Last year, through November, 16.8 million tons of freight and bulk goods passed through Duisburg, down from nearly 26 million tons in the comparable period in 1978. Today, roughly 30,000 people are employed in Europe's inland shipping industry, most of them along the Rhine, about 15 percent fewer than five years ago.

Across the street from Haniel, signs of the changes in the shipping business are evident. The little inns where Rhine bargemen and their families used to eat and spend the night while their ships lay moored until morning, are now private homes; restaurants have closed and been converted into apartments.

''Unemployment is high, young people go elsewhere to seek work,'' said Horst Krieger, an executive of Franz Haniel.

To prevent a rash of bankruptcies, the Central Commission for Rhine Navigation, in Strasbourg, France, has sought to scrap excess shipping capacity, paying shippers to take older ships out of service.